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Tour - The Myth of Jupiter and Callisto

The Ursa Major and Minor are represented as a big bear and a small bear.
Click on image for full size (c) 1995 Visual Language. All rights reserved.

In due time Callisto bore a boy child named Arcas.
When Jupiter's wife Juno saw this evidence of Jupiter's
infidelity she became enraged, and changed Callisto into a
bear. Callisto was ashamed and afraid, and fled into the woods,
not to see her son for many years. One day, when Arcas was a
young man, he decided to go hunting and went into the woods
where his mother Callisto, the bear, resided. Callisto saw
her son, whom she had not seen for many years. Forgetting
she was a bear, she rushed forward to embrace him. Arcas
only saw a bear rushing down on him. He lifted his bow and
let fly an arrow to the mark. At the last moment Jupiter
intervened and cast Callisto and her son into the heavens
as the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the big and little bears,
principal parts of which are the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper.
Arcas became the ancestor of the Arcadian race in the Peloponnesus.

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